AN UPCOMING Hollywood film on the Bhopal gas disaster has run into objections from a survivors’ group that fears the production will whitewash the role of the US company blamed for the tragedy.

The film, Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain starring Martin Sheen, is set for release in December and focuses on the aftermath of the gas leak in 1984, which was the world’s worst industrial accident and claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Sheen plays Warren Anderson, the chief executive of Union Carbide, the US chemical group that ran the factory, who is considered a fugitive in India, where he faces charges of negligence.

“It looks like the director is trying to justify the action and decisions taken by Warren Anderson and many facts are presented wrongly,” an activist from the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, Rachna Dhingra, told reporters.

Dhingra, who said she had read the script but not seen the movie, added: “No one can be allowed to distort the facts.”

Her group wants to meet the crew members to demand some changes in the film.

The director of the film, 38-year-old Ravi Kumar, was not immediately available for comment.

In an interview broadcast yesterday, Sheen, a prominent activist for left-wing causes, told the news channel CNN-IBN he had no sympathy for fellow American Anderson, who fled India for the US in the accident’s aftermath.

The disaster unfolded on the night of December 2, 1984 when the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state, spewed 40 tonnes of toxic gas into surrounding residential areas.

The film’s release coincides with an upsurge in public anger at the handling of the disaster after the first convictions of managers at the plant earlier this month - 25 years after the event. 

Amid anger at the perceived leniency of the sentences - two years in prison pending appeal - the absconded Anderson has become a lightning rod for a general feeling of injustice.